Marian K. Reynolds (born February 16, 1950) is an American former politician who served in the
Kansas House of Representatives and
Kansas State Senate
The Kansas Senate is the upper house of the Kansas Legislature, the state legislature of the U.S. State of Kansas. It is composed of 40 senators elected from single-member districts, each with a population of at least 60,000 inhabitants. Members o ...
.
Reynolds was born in
Dodge City, Kansas and grew up on her family's farm in
Cimarron as one of nine children. She attended community college and married Jay Reynolds. In 1974, she ran for the Kansas House as a
Democrat
Democrat, Democrats, or Democratic may refer to:
Politics
*A proponent of democracy, or democratic government; a form of government involving rule by the people.
*A member of a Democratic Party:
**Democratic Party (United States) (D)
**Democratic ...
. She defeated two other candidates in the
primary election
Primary elections, or direct primary are a voting process by which voters can indicate their preference for their party's candidate, or a candidate in general, in an upcoming general election, local election, or by-election. Depending on the ...
with relative ease, and then beat three-term
incumbent Republican Don Spotts in the general election.
Reynolds served only a single term in the Kansas House, during which she received national and local media attention for being one of the first women to be pregnant and give birth while serving in a state legislature.
She declined to run for re-election in 1976.
After leaving the Kansas House, Reynolds took a job as a sales representative covering Western Kansas for
IBM, and she and Jay Reynolds divorced in 1978. In 1992, Reynolds re-entered politics, running for the
38th district in the Kansas Senate; she opted to run as a Republican, citing her
conservatism and distaste for government spending.
Once again, she served only a single term;
Tim Huelskamp successfully challenged her in the 1996 Republican primary, taking 62% of the vote to Reynolds' 38%.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Reynolds, Marian K.
1950 births
Living people
Republican Party Kansas state senators
Democratic Party members of the Kansas House of Representatives
Kansas Republicans
Kansas Democrats
People from Dodge City, Kansas
20th-century American politicians
Women state legislators in Kansas
20th-century American women politicians